Most of us small shop owners are creating Facebook pages to represent our work, show what products or services we provide and at the end of the day get customers.

That’s okay, there is no shame in that. But smart people have realized that besides good quality of product or service, there is also something more important. What is it? It’s your customer’s loyalty.

Why would this person be your customer and not the other pub’s or cafe or accessories shop around the corner? Well, you need to build a relationship with them.

And that is what a Facebook page is all about.

So, you, as a pub; instead of telling people, hey, we have drinks, come have a drink (you don’t want to promote alcoholism do you?)

Create a story, don’t just sell a product

Instead, create a story, and let them be the stars. Say a person can’t find someone to hang out with, tell them to come anyway, you’ll play a specific song for them, you’ll offer them a shot on the house. More persons ==> More stories.

A pub is not about drinks, it’s about the atmosphere, the music, the story.

Well, don’t be surprised! Technically speaking, any HTML page on the internet that can be accessed publicly can be SEO friendly (SEO Friendly, as in make your webpage show up in the first page of search engines in a natural – without paying – way when people search for keywords related to your business ).

Logically speaking, most Facebook pages are related to a brand, a personal brand, a product or any form of “love us so we make money out of you”. And since many brands have been relying on Facebook recently to interact with users as a 1 on 1 conversation – FB pages are more reliable since they’re more dynamic and up-to-date (some even redirect their domain name to the FB page), instead of the “informative classic website”, a Facebook page has to be SEO friendly.

SEO Title: The first 18 characters of your update.

Here’s an article about the matter “Basic SEO for Facebook pages“. You have to know, it is quite similar to normal SEO for websites, but for example instead of editing Meta data directly in HTML tags, you can do that in the About of the Facebook Page. so on and so forth…

Google’s Search Plus and SEO

Since the recent integration of Google+ content in Google’s search engine (remember the days when we used to see real-time twitter results? well since that contract ended, Google now relies on Google+ for those social results). Whether it’s a step people approve or don’t, we all know Google has almost 80% of world wide traffic, and when you want to find something, you go there. Therefore, now that Google retrieves results – customized to a user influenced by his/her Google circles – a brand has to be on Google+ as well.

The content on Google+ shows up in people’s search results as well.

SEO experts explain what they think of Search Plus and if it will affect SEO in this article. Question remains, if people will adopt it and everyone will be on it? In that case, be a pioneer and gain loyalty for important keywords to lead to your Google+ page, or everyone will just ignore it. We have to wait and see.

The more followers you have, the more influence you will have on their search results.

Conclusion

If you want to be on the “internet”, you have to understand that it is no longer outbound marketing per se. People now search for you and track you down. The easier you make it, the more highly they think of you and the easier they arrive to you instead of another brand. Any form of presence on the web is now searchable, so make sure your content / pages (be it: website, landing page, blog, youtube, facebook, G+, etc…) are SEO friendly.

These are 3 cool recent Augmented Reality executions. The first is from National Geographic where people got to hang out with Dinosaurs, Wild Animals and Astronauts….

This is a Movie Scenes application (that makes you live the movie right there right then). Pretty cool for dreamy people with a huge passion for movies.

And Heinz Ketchup Augmented Reality Recipe application, which I believe is a pretty cool idea. Although I wouldn’t imagine what kind of recipes coming from a Ketchup product, but they’re pioneers and they beat others to it. Moreover it’s pretty inspiring for what many brands can actually accomplish with Augmented Reality Apps.

But most importantly, if you only have time for one video and one video only, make sure you watch a very interesting TED talk about Augmented Reality by storytelling and illusionist Marco Tempest. Think of it, when Magic and Illusion become Digital. This is definitely something you have not seen before.

When I get asked “what do you do?”, at first I used to get excited and tell them. Ok so it would be something like:
– Random human being: So Liliane, what do you do?
– Me: I work in Search Engine Marketing *huge smile on my face*
– RHB: What’s that?
– Me (trying to put it in a simple way to understand): Well you know those ads that appear as sponsored links on search engines like google, on top or on the side while you’re searching for something?
– RHB (Some sort of disappointment starts being drawn on their face): Oh, okay…

Source: Google.com

Now the discussion can take various forms and that really depends on how people think, amount of knowledge in online marketing they have etc… But the one answer I got a couple of times was:

RHB: Yeah… I never click on these!

But it’s what I reply to them that makes a difference. Here goes nothing: Read more…

Today’s post is going to cover, what a QR code is, what is it used for, QR obstacles, what are the best practices for QR Codes, and what are the worst practices for that matter, additionally I will be sharing some good examples of QR Code usage. Nevertheless I want to share that while preparing this post, I aggregated several links about another topic, and that is “Augmented Reality”. So if you’re as excited as I am about the AR fuss, then stay tuned. For now, it’s QR Code time!

What is a QR Code?

QR Code is abbreviated from Quick Response Code. It is a 2-dimensional code, and readable by QR barcode readers, and recently an application for that is available with the smart phone you acquire, if not, you can just download (android). So yeah. it’s like a barcode, but it’s not bars, it’s a matrix.

What is it used for?

Just like any other code, a QR code is unique. Which means, that you can set a QR Code for any link out there, and when scanning that code, it will take you to that online location. The possibilities are endless on what it can be used for. And you will see in the examples how that happens. Some people use it as contact information, and then use their QR Codes as their avatars for example, and then bam, you scan it, and you add them as a contact on your phone book.

I started writing this post on May 17, and never got the time to continue with the research and examples for it. A month later, I hope it’s no longer obsolete.

RFID is a kind of technology that started being implemented for several brands around the world in order for promotion purposes of course in a “social media” kind of way.

In Lebanon, we are almost always late when it comes to implementing new technologies (not that RFID is new), and sometimes even on the creative side we are behind. Even though we all know how much creativity can be drawn from us Lebanese, and we have seen it happen with many agencies, some sadly don’t fall in that category. And also sadly, it might be a cognitive thing (any sociologist in the house?), we tend to excel when we are abroad, but when we are in Lebanon, we always feel the need to see what they did abroad (of course there are many exceptions). Read more…